Via Woj on Twitter. Not sure why the Hornets want him... it robs them of a useful player and doesn't, I think, get them under the luxury tax. But hey, Devin Brown is a somewhat useful player. Cool.
The Hornets are step closer to cashing in on the $5M rebate. Let's see who else they can unload before the deadline.
http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news?slug=ap-hornets-bullstrade&prov=ap&type=lgns Bulls get G Devin Brown from Hornets CHICAGO (AP)—The New Orleans Hornets have traded starting shooting guard Devin Brown(notes) to the Chicago Bulls for backup 7-foot center Aaron Gray(notes). The 31-year-old Brown has played in 39 games for New Orleans this season, starting all but two games. He is averaging 9.7 points per game and has made nearly 37 percent of his shots from 3-point range. The Bulls this year have missed the scoring of guard Ben Gordon(notes), who signed with Detroit before the season. The trade was announced Monday, before Chicago played at San Antonio and the Hornets at Portland. The move opens the way for rookie Marcus Thornton(notes), who has averaged 9.4 points in only 18.6 minutes per game, to start for the Hornets. It also brings New Orleans within about $424,000 of getting under the NBA’s luxury tax threshold. Gray, who is in his third NBA season, averaged 2.3 points and two rebounds in eight games this season with the Bulls.
On its own merits, the trade is good but non-impactful, but more importantly, it seems like Devin Brown is a cheap stopgap replacement in case some other members of our backcourt get traded.......
I'd say it makes that case more likely. So Salmons was a cheap stopgap replacement, and now we've got Brown, who's a cheap stopgap replacement of a cheap stopgap replacement That's entertaining, but I also tend to think any trade we make better bring back something useful or we're gonna be in trouble.
I agree with that as well, but with a closer look, I think the issue isn't as dire as it has been made out to be. Kirk and Salmons have PERs of 10.5 and 12.7, respectively. I know the stat doesn't capture everything, but that's pretty bad. Even though Salmons got off to a rough start, his year to date has been in line with the rest of his career, it was last year that was the exception. Our good play coincided with Hinrich and TT coming back and I don't think it was coincidental, but I think it had more to with the fact that the team needed some rotation players to play with Derrick Rose, and less to do with anything remarkable about their games. As long as we can get decent end-of-bench veterans and not end-of-bench rookies, I think shedding Kirk/Salmons/TT for Cap Space is well worth the risk.
I think their PER undersells them because they both started off the season playing terribly. I also think they generally have hard to work harder for their opportunities than Brown, who had the benefit of playing with Chris Paul (and Lebron before that in his career). So in this case I think the trade-off is probably bigger than it is on paper. But we'll see.
And with this, we see why Gray is a moron who's been fat and out of shape since day 1. See, you just had to give him minutes and then he'd win his "battle" with conditioning.
Hahaha, I do think Gray could =ve been good if he wouldve lost some weight and been able to jump. Hes shown some nice post moves.
